Tips to Efficiently Organize Your Desk Drawers

Achieving an efficient workspace is no small task. Not only do you need to find the right desk, drawers, computer, lighting, etc… but you also need to arrange and organize them in an intuitive and accessible way. Often times your desk drawers are the largest storage components in your office and knowing exactly how to arrange your items within them can be quite challenging. After the jump we'll share some tips that will help you create an efficient storage system for your home office.

Evaluate your space. It's important to recognize the tasks you'll be using your office for in order to best customize your drawer space to facilitate them. Computing? Writing? Drawing? Scrap-booking? Etc…

Think of your drawers as a hierarchy of importance. The closer the drawer is to you, the greater the importance. Additionally, the closer the drawer is to your dominant hand, the greater the importance. The most used items are typically of greatest importance but this isn't always the case.

Prioritize the top drawer. We like to keep the tools that are the foundation of our tasks available in the top-most drawers. This includes pens, pencils, stapler, binder clips, and index cards. Additionally, we store our wallet and keys in the top drawer as well. It's important to be very selective about the items you put here. Clutter can easily accumulate and when everything is important, nothing is (I believe I snagged this line from The Incredibles). This is why junk drawers always seem to be the highest drawers in kitchens and offices.

Carefully fill drawers one-by-one. The key to keeping your drawer organization meaningful and efficient is to place items in each drawer one by one. This step is largely going to be dictated by your personal needs and supplies. For example, we like to keep a ream of printer paper in one drawer, rulers, tape measure, pushpins, and businesses cards in another, headphones in another, cables + computer accessories in another, etc…

Keep things organized. When stuff begins to pile up in your drawers, it's good to micro-organize the space in order to keep your possessions separate an accessible. Here are 8 cheap products that can help organize and divide your drawers.

Empty space is good. If you have empty drawers at the end, don't feel like you need to fill them with other items. If you arranged your drawers carefully it means you grouped similar things together. Giving your items a little more space might not justify breaking the continuity of your initial setup.

Find your way. If you have more than one set of drawers, it's often helpful to label them so you can find things easier. We recommend the Dymo LetraTag Labelmaker.

The images in this post come from Gregory's old house tour. Check out his space for more examples of ways to keep your drawers neat and orderly.